close your eyes (and you begin again)
by falling winter roses
Summary: you are simply ashes that float through the air, a feeling in the air that i can sense from a million miles away / draco malfoy, hermione granger, and the fine line between life and death /,Muggle AU / tw for implied suicide / qlfc forum, chaser one, puddlemere. season six, round seven


**a/n: at first i was like…**

 **i haven't even heard of any of these movies, let alone mine lol**

 **anyway, thanks to allison for helping me out here :)**

 **here ya go!**

 **.**

 _ **chaser 1, qlfc forum, puddlemere united**_

 _ **main prompt:**_ **Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003)**

 _ **optional prompts:**_

 _ **(object) letter**_

 _ **(word) limitless**_

 _ **(genre) angst**_

 **word count: 1852**

 **.**

He stares at the town before him, numb to the sight of his new reality.

The echoes of that final shot still ring in his mind, that single push of a finger that ended everything.

He can still remember.

He looks at the town before him and closes his eyes, shuts them tight.

He wishes that he didn't remember.

Her face keeps popping up in his dreams. It screams at him, a memory of the fact that it's his fault. His fault that he couldn't save her; he wasn't able to stop _him._

Tom, the boy who he had once looked up to. The boy who had once practically been his big brother.

 _Not anymore._

Draco can still remember his sneering laugh as he cocked the gun.

He can remember how Tom had her pinned, how Draco was powerless to do anything.

 _I could've stopped him._ The words swirl inside of him. They are mocking him, _tormenting_ him, over and over again…

He wishes they hadn't moved him, replaced his name, so that her murderer wouldn't be able to find him and finish what he started. Their stupid, _stupid_ program. They thought they could summarize every single murder in the world, every single crime. They thought they knew the score, that out of jealousy Tom had killed _her_ and was going to kill Draco, too, but hadn't had the time before he'd had to run—the police had come so fast.

Draco wished they hadn't come so quickly. He wishes that he'd had time to fight Tom, to kill him. No matter that he probably would've lost anyway, that he probably would've been shot. At least he would've been able to join Hermione in the throes of death.

He hates their program; they have taken away all that he loves, in addition to the death of the one that was the center of it all.

Draco knows that Tom will never finish him. He wanted her killed.

It seems so ironic now, that Tom had wanted her killed, as Draco remembers those nights long ago, watching the lovely young couple from the trees, crying softly, gently into the night. How happy she and Tom had been those days, how alone he had felt, how _not enough._

Tom had been his big brother, once upon a time. Tom and Draco's families had been the closest of friends, and it seemed that both of them had been in love with that poor little girl with bright, intelligent eyes. The girl that both their families and disapproved of, had hated with a passion.

But Tom had always been the better one, the boy with everything. Good looks, good brains, good skills. He had everything that Draco didn't—no wonder she had chosen Tom over him, Draco used to think to himself. He was Draco's big brother, his best friend, the one that had advised him in everything.

He remembered how slowly her and Tom's relationship had deteriorated into the ashes, the shambles that ended it all. He remember that night where he woke at one forty-three AM to find his doorbell ringing, her at his doorstep.

He remembers how Tom had withdrew from their group, angry looking, turning more gaunt and pale and cold every passing day, as the new couple flourished and loved and laughed. They thrived, something that it seemed that she and Tom had never been able to do, no matter how hard they tried.

He doesn't hate Tom. He hates himself for not being able to save her, for not being able to kill Tom. Draco wants to kill him. He deserves to be killed, he growls to himself.

 _But you never will,_ the voices taunt.

 _Coward._

Sleep escapes him. All he can do at night is lay awake, staring at the ceiling, dreaming awake. A dream he can control, unlike the nightmares of memory that plague him should he close his eyes for more than a second.

He is trying not to break. Not to fracture.

But he is not sure he can keep going.

The memory of her smile is the worst of all. It haunts him, a reminder of what he will never see again.

/

 _you're drowning in memories, little man_

 _trying not to fall into the depths_

 _but deep down inside_

 _you want to drown_

* * *

"Ah, Harry, how nice to see you here," the librarian greets him. How ironic it is, that the new name that they gave him is one that he now shares with one of _her_ closest friends. Draco smiles. He knows it is fake, and that everyone can see so. The gaunt look in his face, the shadows under his eyes, they all tell the truth when his lips form a beautiful lie.

He nods at the librarian in greeting and wanders back into the shelves and shelves of heavy tomes. _She would've loved it here,_ he thinks, and it sends another wave of pain through him, to see this place where in a different world, perhaps, she could've been standing at his side. He imagines her standing by his side, smiling, taking every book off every shelf, giving every single one a piece of her time.

He stops.

 _No,_ he tells himself.

He can't help but to smile at the thoughts, though, even though another wave of pain washes through him, sucking out another piece of the little sanity he has left.

They come all the time now, these waves. They are killing him slowly from the inside out, and soon all he will be is a withered skeleton, a mere memory to those he loved.

 _But you already are,_ he remind himself. He is far, far away from everyone he knows, from his family, his friends, his fellow mourners of that woman now only ashes, scattered into the wind.

Draco takes a deep breath.

He imagines that he can feel her in the air, ashes floating all the way to here.

He knows it is not possible. He is hundreds of miles away, alive, breathing, but dead in the heart, with a fractured mind and a shattered soul.

He wishes he could go back to the beginning.

He wishes he could change it all.

/

 _time can't turn back,_

 _back into youthful times_

 _you want to find a piece of childish joy_

 _but it's all gone, forevermore._

* * *

He breathes her ashes every day, walks the winding roads in the small town that he lives in now. There are no reminders of their love here. No memorable sights, no places where they had walked.

Perhaps that is for the better, he tells himself. Perhaps it makes him hurt a little less than he already does.

Her face is fading in his memory, the detail of it turning blurry, the colors turning grey in his mind. He grasps onto what little he has left.

He dares not think her name. He can only let himself think of her eyes. Her warm, chocolate eyes, a common color, but nevertheless _different._ Special.

Just like her.

They were windows to the soul, for when he looked into them they sparkled with an intensity of joy and anger and sorrow and everything in between. Her eyes had been the first thing to draw him in, when he first saw her he stopped and drew in a breath.

His father ushered him away, whispering the misdeeds of the poor.

He didn't care.

That night, so long ago, he dreamed of her eyes. The same eyes that haunt him now.

Her face may be gone, washed away into wind and sun, a faded memory, but her eyes will always be in color.

They sparkle in his mind, beautiful and intelligent and _alive_. A hundred thousand different colors dance in the background of warm brown as the light hits them, a flickering reflection.

They are ashes now, floating in the wind, scattered away from each other.

/

 _ashes, ashes, we all fall down_

 _[i'm breathing in the_

 _colors of your eyes]_

 _don't forget me in the deep_

* * *

He finds that somehow, despite the history of hatred and disbelonging, he misses them. How he misses them, he does not know. Harry, Neville, Luna, Ginny, and more. He misses them all.

He fades away in silence now, with no one to talk to. Sometimes he wonders if they know why he's gone. This damned program has moved him miles and miles away from everything he holds dear, everything that is now fading away into the distance.

 _Bystander #607,_ the files say. Is that all he is now? Is he simply just a number? _Is_ he even an innocent bystander at all?

 _Witness Protection Program File #607.  
Name: Draco Lucius Malfoy  
Change: Harry Eli Diorel  
Witnessed:  
Murder of  
Hermione Jean Granger  
by  
Tom Marvolo Riddle_

He hates the file, with its neat print and cream-coloured paper. They let him see it when they relocated them. They gave him his new history, new name, new personality. They gave him contacts, surgical alterations, so he is nothing like who he was before.

He looks in the mirror sometimes and wonders if she would know who he was.

/

 _sometimes change_

 _is the worst demon of all_

 _[don't take her away from me_

 _please]_

* * *

Years pass by. He fades away, and he knows what is happening.

He can feel his heart slowing, the shattered pieces inside of him digging into him, destroying him from the inside out. He imagines shards of glass tearing into his flesh, his muscle, breaking down his bones, killing him slowly, painfully, until he is nothing but an empty shell. The colors of the glass flicker in the light, glimmering a hundred thousand shades.

They remind him of her. But then again, everything reminds him of her.

A flower unfurling its petals reminds him of the garden she so lovingly tended. An old couple walking by reminds him of the life they could've had together, if only she hadn't come to such an untimely end. The way the sky stretches like a blue blanket of life over the earth reminds him of her smile and her laughter ringing through the air as she twirled around, her hands outstretched to the sky.

He writes a hundred thousand words, books and pages filled with the ramblings of a fractured mind. They are letters, written to someone long gone.

The letters float away in the wind.

He watches as they turn to dust.

/

 _my end will be the same as yours_

 _i swear it._

 _there is only one way,_

 _now._

* * *

He looks out into the world from where he stands, the newly-bought gun in his hands. He looks up and out, into the sky, and watches as it spreads, limitless, just like him, him and her.

Just like how they were.

 _Just like how we will be,_ he tells himself.

/

 _you are the only thing i can see._

 _i reach out a hand to touch you_

 _our fingers entwine._

 _i close my eyes for the last time._

* * *

 _Hermione._

The word echoes through him.

A beating drum.

 _Hermione._

/

 _[we end in different moments,_

 _but we begin at the same time._

 _together.]_


End file.
